 This video is sponsored by professional photographers of America. Join a community of over 33,000 photographers and find equipment, insurance, education, and business tools made specifically for photographers like you. So I've tried acrylic. I've tried fine art papers. I've tried printing on aluminum. I've tried metallic papers. And through all this experimentation with printing my astrophotography over the years, I've definitely gotten some results that I do truly like. But it wasn't until I discovered backlit prints on transparent film that I really felt I found the ultimate method for displaying my deep sky astrophotography as framed art. So in this video, I'm going to explore what makes this printing technique so powerful compared to other options for printing astrophotography. I'll talk about the pros and cons of this printing method and I will show you how to make your own wireless backlit print. Hello, my name is Nico Carver and this channel is all about astrophotography, the art of taking photographs of the night sky and displaying them. And there are many different specialties within astrophotography. And as my channel name, Nebula Photos, suggests, my specialty is photography of nebulae, which are these beautiful clouds of gas and dust out there in space. One of the most challenging things about processing and mostly displaying photos of nebulae is that there is a lot of subtle variation in the shadow detail that does show up pretty well on a bright screen, whether it's a monitor or a smartphone, but it's much harder to display those subtle variations on typical print media. And so we're going from an additive model of color on the screen that uses a white backlight and then it filters that light through all these little red, green and blue filters to make all the different colors you see on the screen. We're going from that to a subtractive model of color with traditional printing where you're laying down combinations of pigments, you know, cyan, yellow, magenta, black, gray. And those pigments are getting absorbed onto a medium, usually paper. And there are definite downsides to each kind of model for displaying color, but the major downside with normal printing onto paper is that you'll never reach the kind of contrast ratios you can with a screen. And that means some detail, especially in the shadows, are always going to get lost when you're compressing the amount of contrast available. Now, this is where backlit prints with a transparency film as the print medium really shine as the method can achieve much higher contrast ratios than we get with normal printing on paper or other opaque media. So I first learned about this method in 2018 when an astrophotographer named Greg Marshall had a booth at NEAF, which is an annual astronomy conference. And Greg was offering backlit printing as a service for astrophotographers and he was showing off some of his astrophotography using this method. And I was just blown away by how good these prints looked when they were backlit. Now, Greg no longer offers printing, he still does make excellent tools and accessories for astrophotographers. Those are available through his website, watchered.com. And I actually just ordered a new flats panel from him. But to continue with the story, because Greg stopped offering backlit printing as a service, this set me off on a journey to find some kind of suitable replacement for what he was offering because I was just so blown away by it. And that turned out to be much harder than I thought it was gonna be. I tried for a long time to make prints on transparency here at home using my home printer, which is right behind me here. It's a eight color inkjet, the Canon PIXMA Pro 100. But with the backlit transparencies they came out very washed out once I lit them up. You can see my best attempt here and you can see it's not very good. I just couldn't get the black level correct no matter how I messed with the settings. So eventually I gave in and I turned to commercial printing. I found out that there's a whole industry actually with backlit printing for signage and advertising. Once I thought about it, that made total sense because I'd seen these things before. So I ordered a Dura Transprint from Blue River Digital and that company specializes in this kind of thing and Dura Trans is their most expensive product because it actually goes through a photochemical process to expose it and it's not just an inkjet print. But what that allows them to do is get much deeper blacks onto the transparency, which of course is very important for astrophotography. So even though this was expensive, this was $59 plus shipping for a five by seven print. For me to realize my artistic vision of what a framed print of my work should really look like, it's well worth the cost and I plan to order bigger prints from them in the future too. This video isn't sponsored by Blue River Digital but I'm proud to say this video is sponsored by PPA, Professional Photographers of America. I just joined recently and I'm very happy with what they offer as part of a membership. For a low monthly price, you receive a bunch of unique benefits. We all know that astrophotography gear can get very expensive and to tell you the truth, all of my photography and astro gear is probably one of my biggest investments worth more than my car. So I've often thought, I really should ensure my photography equipment like I have insurance for my car if it's so valuable but I've just never really gotten around to it. Well, PPA makes that super easy because membership includes $15,000 worth of equipment insurance. And it's a very nice plan. I did look into the details. If something breaks and you need full replacement, it's a $350 flat deductible or if you wanna get your equipment repaired, it's just a $50 flat deductible. The equipment insurance alone makes it worth it PPA membership for me but then there's also data recovery services. That could be huge like if you're shooting a once in a lifetime event like a total solar eclipse or a meteor breaking apart. And then lastly, PPA is very active in terms of photography, education and training. I know that many of my viewers practice other forms of photography outside of astro. So if that sounds intriguing to you, follow the link in the video description for a special discount on your membership. Okay, now let's talk about the pros and the cons of this printing method compared to other printing methods. So I've already talked about the biggest pro which is the improved contrast ratio and that allows for more detail. But just to drive that home, let's compare a few sections here of the backlit transparency print versus an inkjet print at the same size done on a very good fine art paper. Another pro of backlit printing is it looks good in many different lighting conditions including in the dark. I think it's the only kind of print I can think of that actually looks just as good in the dark as it does with lights. And lighting conditions are one of the hardest parts of getting a print to look right. So for instance, I really do like my high gloss metallic print, I had this made for a gallery show in DC. And for the show, it was lit very well, that worked fine. Then after the show ended, I brought it home, I've been displaying it here in the apartment and I don't have professional track lighting. So half the time I look at it and there's so much glare from the window light or whatever that I can barely see it. So viewing angles, viewing conditions, being not quite as important if you have a backlit print are another big pro I think for this method. The biggest con of backlit transparency is the only way I have found that works for getting it to look right is having the transparency print actually printed by a pro like using this actual photographic process. And this means you can't take advantage of home printing if you already have a nice printer at home. And it also means that that cost is higher. A smaller con is you need to use a backlit frame and traditionally this means having to plug into a power source and then think of how to hide the dangling wire. So to end this video, I wanted to address my method for getting around the wire which is to DIY a frame that is powered by batteries instead. And there are a number of ways I could have gone about making this but for this first tutorial on making this kind of frame I wanted to keep it as cheap and as simple as I could think up. Okay, step one, I'm just using a cheap shadow box frame from Michaels here and I'm gonna remove these inner supports with a razor blade in my fingers and take out the front glass but save it for later. Then I'm going to add some shiny foil tape to the inside of the frame. Just tear and press in. My shadow box came with some foam on the backing board so I'm just gonna roughly remove that from the backing board. And then I have this LED light strip with a battery compartment. So I'm gonna cut out a spot from the backing board for that battery compartment to fit into. I'm then gonna cut a piece of foam core that fits into the frame and add some foil tape. This is gonna be a back reflector for our light box. Then I'm gonna place the glass back into the frame. Then the transparency print we had ordered. And then a piece of frosted plexiglass that I cut to size. That's gonna sort of diffuse the light onto the print. Then I'm gonna glue and tape some foam. So little pieces of foam core that I cut out to provide support for those front pieces in the frame and keep them from falling back. Then I'm going to stick on the LED light strip so you just take off the backing and stick it all along the sides. And I started by just filling all available space with the LED strip. And I think that worked out well. Then I put in the back reflector piece that I made with foam core and tape and tested. And it looks bright here on camera but it actually looks really good in person. So I was happy with this, but if it was too bright you could remove some of the LEDs from the strip. And then I'm just gonna replace this backing plate that now has a cutout for the battery compartment and secure everything. And you're done. It was actually really pretty easy. Don't need a lot of tools or anything to do this project. So hopefully this was helpful and I do plan to make other videos on printing but this is the one I was most excited about sharing which is why I did it first. And it was only possible thanks to my sponsor PPA. So please remember to take a look at the link in the description for a special discount on your membership for professional photographers of America. Till next time, this has been Nico Carver, Clear Skies.